You know the old saying: “When the leaves turn brown, some serious fundraising’s about to go down.” OK, so maybe I just made that up; but that doesn’t make it any less true. The average nonprofit can expect to receive about half — or even more — of its fundraising revenue in the fourth quarter. And if you haven’t thought about your year-end giving plan before the pumpkin spice lattes hit the shelves, you might not be making the most out of this critical time of year for nonprofits.
At Click & Pledge, we definitely notice the giving spirit come out at this time of year. And while it might seem more appealing to wear a parka in a steambath than to create a year-end giving plan, it doesn’t have to be so stressful. In fact, we put together this guide (and a few simple worksheets) to help you knock out the basic components in just a couple of hours.
So, ditch the parka for a chair and a nice pumpkin spice latte, and let’s dive in.
1. Outline Your Objectives
A plan is only as good as its goals. That means you should look to accomplish something feasible, concrete, and measurable with your year-end giving plan. Start by considering these questions:
- How much fundraising revenue did you earn during last year’s campaign?
- What could be done differently to make this year’s campaign better?
- How much do you expect your budget to grow this year?
- What, if any, holes do you foresee with your programming budget that need to be addressed?
- Why is it important that we address these budgetary concerns with our year-end fundraising?
For something more concrete, try filling out this sentence:
“For this year-end giving plan, our organization’s priority is to insert specific result to insert specific organizational need(s) to address.”
There’s another important aspect here: timing. How long do you plan to run your year-end giving campaign? On one hand, your end-date should almost unanimously be at least January 1. That’s because every year, the most donations happen in the last week of December. You can even extend the deadline for those patrons participating in corporate matching gifts programs that usually implement a grace period.
Whether you choose to kick off your campaign with a Halloween Haunt, or a Giving Tuesday marathon, or a donation drive starting December 1 — it totally depends on your organization’s preparedness and donor base. Go back to your data from last year’s campaign to see when it was launched, and whether donations played a significant impact during a specific time frame.
2. Tell The Story
Most donors are driven by an organization’s mission, not necessarily the numbers. It’s a lot easier for people to digest your mission with your organization’s story, rather than plain statistics.
Stories create social bonding experiences, which cause your brain to release oxytocin, a chemical partly responsible for creating lasting memories and strong emotions. Even the most beautiful annual report infographic doesn’t compare if it’s flooded with statistics.
What are some of the stories that have popped up out of your organization over the last year? What’s the real-life, human story behind your fundraising goal? Instead of talking about X number of people you’ve served or plan to serve, focus on one person’s story.
There are endless ways to tell that story. Maybe it’s a mini-documentary, or a blog post, or a podcast, or a photo collage. It’s up to you to decide what’s both powerful and feasible for your organization. However you do it, there will be multiple ways to let donors know about that story. Which brings us to…
3. Define Your Communications Channels
So now that you have an idea of what you want to do, you’re going to need to find out how you’re going to accomplish it. At this point, it’s a good idea to look at how patrons interact with your organization. Who are they? What are their goals for your organization? What interests them the most? If you’ve never developed a donor persona before, it’s time to make like a high school biology student and dissect.
A good place to start is with traditional demographics like age, gender, and income; but don’t stop there. Get to the nitty-gritty, and you can even be a little imaginative. Is your typical donor a tennis enthusiast who checks her email between sets? Perhaps they’re really into drone-racing and watch how-to instructional videos. Whatever their thing may be, use those insights to carefully craft and deliver your message.
Also, try to create at least three donor personas. Your organization may have subsets of typical donors interested in different aspects of your organization.
Once you have these personas mapped out, that’s when you can start determining how you’re going to deliver your message. Make a list of all your communications channels. That might include social media, email, your website, direct mail, or more.
This is where your donor personas come in handy. Review these channels and see where each persona may spend most of their media time, and what channels are best received. From there, you can determine how often you’re going to reach your segmented audiences on what specific channels.
Try using the worksheet below to help you identify your donor personas.
4. Determine How You’ll Measure Results
Your year-end fundraising plan needs to be measurable, or else you won’t know how well you’re doing (or how to improve for next year). To measure your success, you’ll need to introduce Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, to your objectives and communications plan.
No two communications tactics will have the exact same KPIs. For example, you wouldn’t measure the success of your email sends via Facebook Likes. Rather, KPIs are measurements of end-goals you want your donors to take when interacting with that medium.
Go back to your goals and objectives and map them out next to your communications plan. Then, take each component of that plan and define your KPIs. Try to go beyond standard vanity metrics like email open rates or page views. Get specific.
Examples
- If you have paid Facebook ads and your goal is for your social audience to donate to your website, one KPI would be to measure the number of donations that came through your website via social media referrals.
- If your email newsletter is meant to drive people to a year-end campaign video, one KPI would be the number of times that video was watched. To dig further, a more specific KPI would be how long they watched that video, and whether that view led to any donations.
Use the handy-dandy worksheet below to map out your objectives, strategies, and KPIs to keep track of your year-end giving plan.
5. Set Your Budget & Determine Costs
So you’ve done the first half of your year-end giving plan. Now comes the part that many love to loathe: budgeting and timekeeping. This should be an estimate of everything you’ll need to pull of your campaign. That may include determining costs for:
- Staff time and salaries
- Tools and software usage
- Design and print materials
- Logistics (stamps, shipping, etc.)
The most important part here is determining your return on investment, or ROI. If you’re spending more to run your year-end campaign than you expect your goal to achieve, you’ll need to adjust your communications plan to be more practical.
Ideally, your budget should be somewhere in between a rough estimate and hyper-precise. If you spend too much time and analysis estimating the project, you won’t have any wiggle-room if your plan needs to be more flexible. On the other hand, too rough of an estimate means your budget has too much room for margin of error.
Here’s another worksheet to help you determine your year-end campaign costs for each item. You can also revisit this worksheet later to review your year-end campaign’s revenues.
6. Compose Your Calendar
Once your budget’s in order, it’s time to map out your deliverables, or when each piece of your campaign will go into action. A couple of things to keep in mind:
- Schedule your campaign around key dates like Giving Tuesday, Christmas, or New Year’s Eve. These affect the timing of your creative materials and their efficacy.
- Work smarter, not harder. If you try to communicate too-much-too-often with only a handful of channels or creative materials, that may have the opposite effect of what your organization wants to achieve.
- Be flexible. There will likely be a point during your campaign where your plan isn’t going as expected. Make sure you monitor your results regularly and be ready to make changes if that’s the case.
You will also want to share your calendar with your team so everyone stays on the same page. Google Calendars are a great way to go. We also use HootSuite to map out and schedule our social media posts.
7. Visualize, Analyze, & Improve
You’ve executed every deliverable with ease, and you’ve made your schedule flexible enough to give a Cirque du Soleil acrobat a run for their money. But: did it work?
It’s easy to get lost in the planning and deliverables and forget that meeting your goal was the most important item. As with any major campaign, it’s crucial to follow up and review what worked and what didn’t.
There’s a number of ways to accomplish this. Go back to those KPIs you created at the beginning of your planning phase and see how well they stacked up. A good donor management and event management system will help you readily look up your transactions, and determine which avenues through which they came.
You can also run a post-mortem meeting with your team so everyone has the chance to review and make suggestions for next year. This piece comes highly recommended, because it brings the team together and serves double-duty as the official end of a project.
Whatever you decide to do, pat yourself on the back. Get excited for the upcoming year, because you have another 9-10 months before you do it all over again!
Double the Donation Partners with Beracha for Matching Gifts
/0 Comments/in Learning Center /by ShelbyGAtlanta, GA (January 22, 2019) — Double the Donation is excited to announce a new partnership with Beracha, a leading provider of custom technology solutions.
Beracha has integrated 360MatchPro, Double the Donation’s enterprise matching gifts platform, into nSpire, a social donations and donor portal engine. This integration will allow nSpire users to collect every possible corporate matching gift.
With 360MatchPro, nSpire users can present each donor with clear and simple information about their employer’s matching gift guidelines. These guidelines can be found on the donation confirmation page and through an email automatically sent after each donation is made.
When donations are made using a corporate email address, that company’s matching gift guidelines are presented to the donor automatically. If a personal email is used, the donor will be presented with a matching gift search tool where they can search for their employer.
“When we were looking for a matching gifts partner, 360MatchPro stood out as both the most comprehensive and the easiest platform to use,” said Dana Dunmyer, CEO and President of Beracha. “We want it to be easy for nSpire users to collect as many matching gifts as possible, and we know 360MatchPro will help them do that.”
Every year, $4-7 billion in matching gift revenue goes unclaimed because donors don’t know that they are eligible to claim it. With 360MatchPro, each donor is automatically emailed and encouraged to check their match-eligibility.
“Our mission is to help as many organizations as possible collect that unclaimed matching gift revenue, and we’re excited to be working with the great team at Beracha,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “nSpire is such a great platform, and we’re proud to offer matching gifts as a new enhancement.”
The 360MatchPro integration provides each user with a 360MatchPro portal. This portal stores every donation, tracks the match-eligibility of each donor and the outreach they are sent, and offers actionable insights that organizations can use to enhance their matching gift efforts.
Find out more about Beracha at https://beracha.org/.
Double the Donation Partners with NeonCRM for Matching Gifts
/0 Comments/in Learning Center /by ShelbyGAtlanta, GA (December 7, 2018) — Double the Donation is excited to announce to announce a new partnership with NeonCRM, a cloud-based software suite providing invaluable tools to nonprofit organizations.
NeonCRM can be fully integrated into 360MatchPro, Double the Donation’s most robust matching gifts tool. By simply inputting an organization’s NeonCRM Organization ID and API Key into their 360MatchPro account, donations begin to flow automatically from NeonCRM into 360MatchPro.
When donations flow into 360MatchPro, email automation begins instantaneously. Every donor will receive an automated follow-up email encouraging them to check their match-eligibility. Plus, the donors will then be able to report the submission of their matching gift request back to the organization.
“Matching gifts are a huge untapped revenue source. By providing our users with the most effective matching gift tools out there, we are offering them a chance to claim some of that revenue,” said Tim Sarrantonio, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Neon One. “Double the Donation not only offers the most user-friendly tools available, but also the most extensive and comprehensive tools. We are very excited to see what our NeonCRM users do with all the extra revenue.”
The biggest hurdle to collecting matching gifts is lack of donor awareness. By automatically following up with donors and encouraging them to check their match-eligibility, 360MatchPro is narrowing that gap.
“There is $4-7 billion in matching gift revenue left on the table every year, and our goal is to help as many organizations claim as many of those dollars as possible,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “We are very excited to see that number go down as NeonCRM users begin claiming more and more of that revenue.”
360MatchPro provides donors with company-specific matching gift information. This information is presented simply and clearly so that each and every donor understands what they qualify for and how to claim it.
NeonCRM users can track their email delivery success and open rates in their 360MatchPro portal. This is just one example of the many actionable insights provided by 360MatchPro.
To learn more about the suite of tools offered by NeonCRM, check out their website at https://www.neoncrm.com/.
Virtuous Partners with Double the Donation for Matching Gifts
/0 Comments/in Company Updates /by ShelbyGAtlanta, GA (November 19, 2018) — Double the Donation is proud to announce a new partnership with Virtuous Software, an industry-leading provider of software solutions for nonprofits. Together, Virtuous and Double the Donation are providing a seamless integration of matching gift information and automated outreach for nonprofit organizations.
Virtuous is a modern nonprofit CRM, marketing and donation platform that is purpose-built to personalize donor communications and grow giving. By offering matching gift tools, Virtuous is expanding the functionality available to their customers and providing an opportunity to exponentially increase revenue.
“We’ve known that matching gifts was the next frontier for our customers, and upon researching all of the providers out there, we found Double the Donation to have the most thorough and user-friendly tools available,” said Gabe Cooper, CEO of Virtuous Software. “By incorporating matching gifts into Virtuous Giving, we are ensuring that our customers are made aware of every fundraising opportunity.”
360MatchPro, Double the Donation’s most robust tool, is an enterprise platform that automates outreach, offers actionable insights on how to improve matching gift efforts, and collects and stores donor information. Employment information is collected through self-identification and email domain capture on the donation form.
The automated outreach provided by 360MatchPro sends customized messaging to donors based on their match-eligibility. These communications can be used to help organizations track the status of all match-eligible donations by encouraging the donors to report when they’ve submitted their matching gift requests.
“We are so excited to provide the virtuous customer base with the tools they need to increase their matching gift revenue,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “There is $4-7 billion in matching gift revenue left on the table each year, and we’re happy to help these organizations claim some of that revenue to further their work.”
The largest hurdle to claiming matching gift revenue is lack of donor awareness, which is why presenting a donor with matching gift information is so important. 360MatchPro automatically presents a donor with simple, company-specific matching gift information. Plus, 360MatchPro’s automated emails take care of all the follow-up required to ensure that potential matching gifts are driven to completion.
Learn more about Virtuous at https://www.virtuouscrm.com/.
Revv Partners with Double the Donation for Matching Gifts
/0 Comments/in Company Updates /by Adam WeingerAtlanta, GA (November 13, 2018) – Double the Donation is excited to announce a new partnership with Revv, an advanced donation and fundraising platform. With this partnership, all Revv customers are now able to activate 360MatchPro, Double the Donation’s most robust matching gift tool.
With 360MatchPro, users are able to fully automate their matching gift marketing and follow-up outreach with donors.
“We are so excited to offer our customers the opportunity to significantly increase their matching gift revenue with 360MatchPro,” said Carl Sceusa, CEO of Revv. “Our partnership with Double the Donation offers our nonprofit customers the most extensive database of matching gift programs with the most user-friendly platform designed to make a typically cumbersome process extremely simple.”
Organizations using 360MatchPro are able to capture donor information through email domain screening, self-identification, and bulk uploads. In addition, 360MatchPro offers fully automated, highly customizable email outreach to see those potential matches through to completion.
It’s easy to turn on 360MatchPro functionality on Revv forms. Simply edit any donation page and add the 360MatchPro upsell, configuring the text however you want it to appear on your form.
Ready to get started with the 360MatchPro-Revv integration? Check out our integration guide.
“Revv does great work, and we can’t wait to see what their customers will do with all of the additional revenue matching gifts can bring,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “With $4-7 billion in matching gift revenue left on the table each year, we are happy to offer organizations the opportunity to claim some of it.”
360MatchPro makes it simple for donors to follow through on submitting matching gift requests to their employers. The biggest hurdle to collecting matching gift revenue is lack of donor awareness, so by incorporating the search tool right onto the Revv donation form and again on the confirmation page, 360MatchPro encourages donors to find out if they are match-eligible.
Plus, Double the Donation presents a clear and simple breakdown of the specific program a donor may be eligible for, making it easy for the donor to submit a match request and increase their impact.
Teaming up with Revv presents an exciting opportunity for all of their customers to increase their annual revenue by utilizing this advanced matching gift automation software.
To learn more about Revv, visit https://revv.co/. More about Double the Donation can be found at https://doublethedonation.com/.
Classy Recommends 360MatchPro for Matching Gifts Integration
/0 Comments/in Company Updates /by Adam WeingerAtlanta, GA (November 7, 2018) – Double the Donation is excited to share a new 360MatchPro integration with Classy, creator of world-class online fundraising software for nonprofits. With 360MatchPro, the automated solution from the leading provider of matching gift software to nonprofits and educational institutions, Classy offers its fundraisers a frictionless matching gift experience.
The integration activates 360MatchPro in the background of Classy donation forms, delivering actionable matching gift information post-transaction to capture the maximum number of match-eligible donors.
“We couldn’t be more excited to hear about this employer matching release, which will undoubtedly provide a ton of value to our shared clients,” said Charlie Anderson, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Classy. “The 360MatchPro integration maintains our recommended, uninterrupted donation process while delivering increased value to nonprofits.”
360MatchPro doesn’t risk lowering conversion rates by injecting extra fields or actions onto the donation form. Studies have shown that lengthening a donation form from 3 to 8 fields dropped overall conversion rate by 12.5%! To combat that negative impact, the 360MatchPro integration doesn’t affect the donor experience of Classy forms at all.
360MatchPro initializes after donations have already been submitted, following up with all donors about their match-eligibility — not just those who know enough about their employer’s complicated employee benefits program to actively self-identify as corporate match-eligible.
“The most significant drop-off in matching gift submission is always the donor awareness of their own eligibility and next steps,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “360MatchPro follows up with all donors, not just those who self-identify as match-eligible, ensuring that all opportunities for matching are identified and actively driven to completion.”
All donors who complete transactions through 360MatchPro-integrated Classy forms receive instantaneous matching gift information directly in their inboxes. Those initially identified as eligible for a matching gift program receive information about their company’s program, including a link to their company’s online matching gift submission portal or other next step. Other donors are sent a quick and easy way to check their matching gift eligibility.
All donors’ employment information and matching gift statuses then flow into the 360MatchPro portal for nonprofits and educational institutions to view, filter, export, and take action on.
Organizations using the 360MatchPro integration with Classy will spend less staff time pursuing matching gifts and more time focusing on top opportunities, thanks to the system’s automation and actionable insights.
Ready to take advantage of the 360MatchPro-Classy integration? It’s easy to turn on directly from the 360MatchPro portal! Check out our integration guide here.
For more about Classy, check out https://www.classy.org/. More about 360MatchPro can be found at https://www.360matchpro.com/.
Luminate Online Matching Gift Integration Guide
/0 Comments/in Learning Center /by ShelbyGIf you are one of the many Luminate customers looking to equip your website with matching gift functionality, you’ve come to the right place! Integrating 360MatchPro into your Luminate pages will revolutionize your matching gift revenue, and we’re going to tell you all about it.
In this article you will find:
Read on to start raising that matching gift revenue!
The basics of matching gifts
In order to understand exactly how 360MatchPro will revolutionize your matching gift revenue, you’ll first need to know exactly what matching gifts are. Matching gifts is a type of corporate philanthropy program often offered as an employee benefit.
When an employee makes a contribution to their favorite nonprofit or educational institution, sometimes their employer will also make a donation to the same nonprofit. Those donations made by employers are known as matching gifts.
Every company’s specific matching gift guidelines are different, but every program includes a standard set of elements:
Though each company outlines their own eligibility guidelines, the process for claiming matching gifts is always the same:
The most common breakdown in this process occurs at the second step. Unfortunately, a nonprofit can not request a matching gift, the original donor has to do it. Because the donor must do it, making sure that every donor knows about the matching gifts should be a number one priority for every nonprofit and educational institution.
360MatchPro: an overview
Double the Donation’s 360MatchPro is a matching gifts super-platform. 360MatchPro provides automated outreach, actionable insights, and instantaneous donor information capture to drive more matching gifts to completion. This platform almost entirely removes the need for a matching gifts agent within an organization at all.
The 360MatchPro dashboard offers actionable insights into your organization’s matching gift efforts. By presenting the figures of your matching gifts in plain figures as well as on an illustrated graph, it is easy to see where and how your matching gift efforts can be enhanced.
When using 360MatchPro, you are able to insert Double the Donation’s matching gift search tool straight on to your donation page. Plus, you can use the same embed code to place the search tool on your confirmation page as well as any other pages where you may want to incorporate matching gifts.
Donor employer information is immediately captured through two avenues: self-identification (donor entering their employer in the designated field) and email domain screening. Whenever a donor donates using their corporate email address, that information is stored along with the rest of their information in 360MatchPro.
From there, a donor is automatically sorted into one of the highly customized email streams setup within 360MatchPro. These emails are triggered based on donor eligibility and can be set for any amount of time after their donation is made.
For example, a match-eligible donor will automatically receive an email from the organization they donated to one hour after donating. This email will encourage them to submit their match request forms, with their company-specific forms linked directly. Then it will encourage the donor to report the submission of their matching gift request. This allows the nonprofit to stay on top of their match-eligible donations and the submitted match requests without lifting a finger.
With 360MatchPro, your organization no longer needs to dedicate time to collecting employment information, sorting through donors searching for match-eligibility, or following up with match-eligible donors. All of that is taken care of instantly and automatically the moment a donation is made.
To learn more about 360MatchPro, check out a demo!
Integrating 360MatchPro into your Luminate Online pages: a step-by-step guide
360MatchPro can be integrated into your Luminate pages. Double the Donation has put together a step-by-step guide (complete with pictures!) to help Luminate users get their matching gift programs in gear!
What we’re going to walk through here is how to get the Double the Donation search tool onto your Luminate donation pages. If you need help creating the Double the Donation element, which will be incorporated onto your page, check out this full technical integration guide.
Step #1: Navigate to the form where you’d like to include a matching gifts field. For this example, we’re going to put it on the donation page.
Step #2: Click on “Design Donor Screens” in the menu on the left side of your screen. Then click “Edit” on the donation form, as illustrated below.
Step #3: In the editor, look at the column on the top left labeled “Select data elements to include in this form:” and click on the custom element “Double the Donation Company ID.” Then click “Add >”, one of the buttons between the columns, to move this element onto your form. Placement on the form doesn’t matter here, just make sure the element is in the column on the right.
Before moving on, make sure that the box next to “Yes, this field is visible” is unchecked.
Step #4: Add an “HTML Caption” to your form following the same steps you took to add Double the Donation. Then click “Components” and add your Double the Donation widget reusable page. Place this field where you want the streamlined search to appear on your form. We recommend including it somewhere in the billing section.
Note: For step-by-step instructions on setting up your reusable page, check out our full technical integration guide.
See the image below for a walk-through:
Step #5: Save the page and preview it. Make sure that the plugin appears on your form. If it does not, contact support at support@doublethedonation.com.
And that’s all there is to it! Now you’re ready to start raking in that matching gift revenue with 360MatchPro!
Implementation of 360MatchPro
Obviously, the first implementation option is for your organization to follow the steps outlined above (and in our full integration guide) and integrate 360MatchPro into your Luminate pages on your own.
However, for those of us who are not so tech savvy, there is another way. At Double the Donation, we work with several technical consultants who are specifically trained in all things Luminate.
With the help of these tech consultants, your organization won’t need to lift a finger. You can leave it to the experts to get Double the Donation up and running as you sit back and watch the matching gifts roll in.
To learn more about 360Matchpro and how it can revolutionize your matching gift revenue, check out this demo!
Now that you are an expert on matching gifts and 360Matchpro, it’s time to get out there and start claiming some of the $4-7 billion in matching gift revenue that’s left unclaimed every year! Now all that’s left to do is inform every single donor you can about matching gifts and watch the revenue start rolling in.
3 Super Handy Worksheets For Year-End Giving
/0 Comments/in Learning Center /by Adam WeingerYou know the old saying: “When the leaves turn brown, some serious fundraising’s about to go down.” OK, so maybe I just made that up; but that doesn’t make it any less true. The average nonprofit can expect to receive about half — or even more — of its fundraising revenue in the fourth quarter. And if you haven’t thought about your year-end giving plan before the pumpkin spice lattes hit the shelves, you might not be making the most out of this critical time of year for nonprofits.
At Click & Pledge, we definitely notice the giving spirit come out at this time of year. And while it might seem more appealing to wear a parka in a steambath than to create a year-end giving plan, it doesn’t have to be so stressful. In fact, we put together this guide (and a few simple worksheets) to help you knock out the basic components in just a couple of hours.
So, ditch the parka for a chair and a nice pumpkin spice latte, and let’s dive in.
1. Outline Your Objectives
A plan is only as good as its goals. That means you should look to accomplish something feasible, concrete, and measurable with your year-end giving plan. Start by considering these questions:
For something more concrete, try filling out this sentence:
“For this year-end giving plan, our organization’s priority is to insert specific result to insert specific organizational need(s) to address.”
There’s another important aspect here: timing. How long do you plan to run your year-end giving campaign? On one hand, your end-date should almost unanimously be at least January 1. That’s because every year, the most donations happen in the last week of December. You can even extend the deadline for those patrons participating in corporate matching gifts programs that usually implement a grace period.
Whether you choose to kick off your campaign with a Halloween Haunt, or a Giving Tuesday marathon, or a donation drive starting December 1 — it totally depends on your organization’s preparedness and donor base. Go back to your data from last year’s campaign to see when it was launched, and whether donations played a significant impact during a specific time frame.
2. Tell The Story
Most donors are driven by an organization’s mission, not necessarily the numbers. It’s a lot easier for people to digest your mission with your organization’s story, rather than plain statistics.
Stories create social bonding experiences, which cause your brain to release oxytocin, a chemical partly responsible for creating lasting memories and strong emotions. Even the most beautiful annual report infographic doesn’t compare if it’s flooded with statistics.
What are some of the stories that have popped up out of your organization over the last year? What’s the real-life, human story behind your fundraising goal? Instead of talking about X number of people you’ve served or plan to serve, focus on one person’s story.
There are endless ways to tell that story. Maybe it’s a mini-documentary, or a blog post, or a podcast, or a photo collage. It’s up to you to decide what’s both powerful and feasible for your organization. However you do it, there will be multiple ways to let donors know about that story. Which brings us to…
3. Define Your Communications Channels
So now that you have an idea of what you want to do, you’re going to need to find out how you’re going to accomplish it. At this point, it’s a good idea to look at how patrons interact with your organization. Who are they? What are their goals for your organization? What interests them the most? If you’ve never developed a donor persona before, it’s time to make like a high school biology student and dissect.
A good place to start is with traditional demographics like age, gender, and income; but don’t stop there. Get to the nitty-gritty, and you can even be a little imaginative. Is your typical donor a tennis enthusiast who checks her email between sets? Perhaps they’re really into drone-racing and watch how-to instructional videos. Whatever their thing may be, use those insights to carefully craft and deliver your message.
Also, try to create at least three donor personas. Your organization may have subsets of typical donors interested in different aspects of your organization.
Once you have these personas mapped out, that’s when you can start determining how you’re going to deliver your message. Make a list of all your communications channels. That might include social media, email, your website, direct mail, or more.
This is where your donor personas come in handy. Review these channels and see where each persona may spend most of their media time, and what channels are best received. From there, you can determine how often you’re going to reach your segmented audiences on what specific channels.
Try using the worksheet below to help you identify your donor personas.
4. Determine How You’ll Measure Results
Your year-end fundraising plan needs to be measurable, or else you won’t know how well you’re doing (or how to improve for next year). To measure your success, you’ll need to introduce Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, to your objectives and communications plan.
No two communications tactics will have the exact same KPIs. For example, you wouldn’t measure the success of your email sends via Facebook Likes. Rather, KPIs are measurements of end-goals you want your donors to take when interacting with that medium.
Go back to your goals and objectives and map them out next to your communications plan. Then, take each component of that plan and define your KPIs. Try to go beyond standard vanity metrics like email open rates or page views. Get specific.
Examples
Use the handy-dandy worksheet below to map out your objectives, strategies, and KPIs to keep track of your year-end giving plan.
5. Set Your Budget & Determine Costs
So you’ve done the first half of your year-end giving plan. Now comes the part that many love to loathe: budgeting and timekeeping. This should be an estimate of everything you’ll need to pull of your campaign. That may include determining costs for:
The most important part here is determining your return on investment, or ROI. If you’re spending more to run your year-end campaign than you expect your goal to achieve, you’ll need to adjust your communications plan to be more practical.
Ideally, your budget should be somewhere in between a rough estimate and hyper-precise. If you spend too much time and analysis estimating the project, you won’t have any wiggle-room if your plan needs to be more flexible. On the other hand, too rough of an estimate means your budget has too much room for margin of error.
Here’s another worksheet to help you determine your year-end campaign costs for each item. You can also revisit this worksheet later to review your year-end campaign’s revenues.
6. Compose Your Calendar
Once your budget’s in order, it’s time to map out your deliverables, or when each piece of your campaign will go into action. A couple of things to keep in mind:
You will also want to share your calendar with your team so everyone stays on the same page. Google Calendars are a great way to go. We also use HootSuite to map out and schedule our social media posts.
7. Visualize, Analyze, & Improve
You’ve executed every deliverable with ease, and you’ve made your schedule flexible enough to give a Cirque du Soleil acrobat a run for their money. But: did it work?
It’s easy to get lost in the planning and deliverables and forget that meeting your goal was the most important item. As with any major campaign, it’s crucial to follow up and review what worked and what didn’t.
There’s a number of ways to accomplish this. Go back to those KPIs you created at the beginning of your planning phase and see how well they stacked up. A good donor management and event management system will help you readily look up your transactions, and determine which avenues through which they came.
You can also run a post-mortem meeting with your team so everyone has the chance to review and make suggestions for next year. This piece comes highly recommended, because it brings the team together and serves double-duty as the official end of a project.
Whatever you decide to do, pat yourself on the back. Get excited for the upcoming year, because you have another 9-10 months before you do it all over again!
Fundly Integrates Double the Donation Matching Gift Tools
/0 Comments/in Company Updates, Learning Center /by Adam WeingerAtlanta, GA (October 17, 2018) — Double the Donation is proud to announce a new integration with NonProfitEasy’s Fundly CRM. This 360MatchPro integration into Fundly CRM will provide users with industry-leading matching gift functionality. Fundly is used by nonprofits to revolutionize the way they serve their communities.
This integration allows Fundly CRM users to fully automate the matching gift process, exponentially increasing their matching gift revenue while reducing time spent on collecting matching gifts. With this integration, Fundly users can turn on this functionality directly through their Fundly CRM account.
“In deciding which matching gift tools to offer our customers, we found Double the Donation’s 360MatchPro to be the most comprehensive and easy-to-use platform,” said Lomesh Shah, President and Co-Founder of NonProfitEasy. “We are so excited to offer our users the opportunity to double their donations with ease, efficiency, and accuracy.”
360MatchPro allows users to automatically track the match-eligibility of their donors, the status of those potential matches, and the revenue raised in matching gifts. Most importantly, 360MatchPro’s automated and customizable email follow-up vastly increases the amount of matching gift requests successfully driven to completion.
The biggest hindrance to matching gifts is lack of donor awareness. With 360MatchPro, Fundly CRM users are able to automatically identify match-eligible donors through email domain capture as well as self-identification directly on their donation forms.
“We are so excited to see that Fundly has integrated our matching gift tools into their CRM, offering all of their users a chance to enhance their matching gift programs,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “There are 15 million people in America who are eligible for matching gifts, and we’re looking forward to seeing how Fundly CRM users connect with those donors.”
Double the Donation has the most extensive database of existing matching gift programs, including more than 20,000 companies, subsidiaries, and spelling variations. Use of this database affords organizations the opportunity to follow through on every possible corporate matching gift donation.
Match-eligible donors are presented with simple, streamlined information about the matching gift program that they qualify for. They are also presented with direct links to the appropriate online forms or downloadable PDFs required to submit their matching gift requests.
Find out more about Fundly CRM at https://www.fundlycrm.com/.
Top 9 Group Management Software for Smart Organizations
/0 Comments/in Lists and Rankings /by Adam WeingerManaging your association, members, or camp population can seem scary. How is your team supposed to keep up with the information and needs of thousands of people? Luckily for you, we’ve compiled a list of our favorite group management software options by specialty, so that you can learn which software is best for your organization.
Our favorites are:
Let’s dive in!
1. Fonteva – Top Group Management Tool for Associations
Group Management Tool Overview
Fonteva is a flexible and easy-to-use group management tool for mid-size to large groups. It can easily manage groups of any size (like trade associations, professional societies, and more!) due to its diverse toolkit of features in a lean and intuitive platform.
All Fonteva products are powered by Salesforce and come with full customer support so that your association can thrive.
Top Group Management Features
Some of the features that make Fonteva our top choice for associations are:
With these features, your Fonteva software can grow as your organization does. With software updates included in your subscription, you don’t need to worry about having to pay more if the system changes.
Takeaway
For an association that needs an intuitive and simple yet intelligent group management software, Fonteva is the right choice.
2. Salsa – Top Group Management Tool for Nonprofits
Group Management Tool Overview
This group management software from Salsa Labs is built specifically for nonprofits. By centralizing donor data and empowering users to seamlessly track relevant information, Salsa’s group management tool is perfect for nonprofits looking to optimize their fundraising strategy.
The donor profiles are easily customizable and allow for information like relationships, interests, demographics, and social media accounts, so that a nonprofit has a 360-degree view of their donors.
Top Group Management Features
Salsa’s group management software comes with valuable features such as:
These options allow a nonprofit to strategically target their donors and discover actionable trends, in order to maximize their fundraising capabilities and increase engagement with their community.
Takeaway
If your nonprofit is looking for a powerful and easy to use group management tool to maximize your fundraising success while strengthening supporter relationships, invest in Salsa’s software.
3. CommunityPass – Top Group Management Tool for Community Centers
Group Management Tool Overview
CommunityPass is a group management tool that provides solutions for aquatic centers and pools, sports leagues and teams, adult education, and more for community centers through their cloud-based software.
This group management tool is great for getting everything done: it includes features for communicating with members through text and email, creating class schedules and online sign-up forms, and creating and issuing key cards, member ID cards, and guest passes.
A community center can plan their season of classes, customize its registration forms, plan and implement their pricing structure, and accept payment all online through CommunityPass.
Top Group Management Features
CommunityPass has a lot of great features for running a successful community center, but some of our favorite group management features are:
CommunityPass’s engagement features allow community centers to successfully manage their guests and members, as well as create and plan the classes and opportunities those members want.
Takeaway
For a community center ready to streamline their group management strategy and combine all their administrative needs into one program, CommunityPass is the perfect software.
4. OmegaFi – Top Group Management Tool for Greek Organizations
Group Management Tool Overview
With OmegaFi’s easy-to-use and mobile-optimized financial management, member database, and website/communications solutions, it’s the clear winner for Greek organizations.
OmegaFi’s three software solutions—Vault, Compass, and GINSystem—are all important aspects of OmegaFi’s group management tool, but the most important for members is Compass.
Compass manages members from the moment they’re offered a place in the sorority or fraternity to their later status as a continuing donor.
Officers can customize their dashboard based on the data that they need to see, and the OmegaFi team and the officers work together to build a reporting process that works for their specific organization.
Top Group Management Features
OmegaFi’s comprehensive fraternity/sorority support system has too many useful features to name, but here are our favorite group management features:
OmegaFi offers Greek organizations all the tools they need to successfully manage their members as well as maintain relationships with graduated brothers and sisters.
Takeaway
Greek organizations who are looking to make their group management tasks easier and simpler, while raising more money for their organization, should look into investing in OmegaFi’s system.
5. CircuiTree – Top Group Management Tool for Camps
Group Management Tool Overview
CircuiTree, created by people who know and love summer camps, is an all-in-one cloud-based group management software designed specifically to make running a summer camp easier.
This software manages everything from housing requests and food allergies to medical records and emergency contact information, all in one easy-to-understand database.
Parents will be thrilled to sign up multiple children, register allergies and medication conditions, and choose camp activities all from their own computers at home. With CircuiTree’s integrated point-of-sale technology, a camp can guarantee secure payment processing and accurate data management.
Top Group Management Features
CircuiTree’s software offers a multifaceted solution to collecting and storing all the information a camp team needs to have a profitable, safe, successful summer. Some of the best features for group management include:
With all these features and more, your camp staff will be able to spend less time filing forms and more time making sure your campers have an excellent time.
Takeaway
If your team wants to spend less time tracking data and filing forms and more time having fun with campers and teaching them valuable skills, consider investing in CircuiTree for all your camp-running needs.
6. Doubleknot – Top Group Management Tool for Museum Membership Programs
Group Management Tool Overview
Museum membership management can be complicated, but they don’t have to be with Doubleknot’s group management software. Built with museums and other similar nonprofits in mind, Doubleknot is built for maintaining member relationships.
Doubleknot’s software provides integrated solutions for everything from ticketing and registration to reservations, donations, sales, and more. Their product is constantly being updated with requests and feedback from clients, which makes it a valuable investment for the future of your nonprofit.
Because it integrates well with other software products, you don’t have to worry about having wasted your money on other software.
Top Group Management Features
Doubleknot’s priorities are recruitment, rewarding, and retaining members for your organization, so their features are focused on helping those things happen. Some of Doubleknot’s best software features are:
With these features, your museum can ensure that your members remain members and that you continue striving towards your goals.
Takeaway
Doubleknot’s group management tools, in addition with everything else that its software does to ensure that your museum or similar nonprofit runs smoothly, can help you reach more people and maintain strong relationships with your supporters.
7. Morweb – Top Group Management Tool for Online Communities
Group Management Tool Overview
Morweb is the child of two companies: Morad Media Inc., which is an award-winning digital design agency, and Morweb CMS Inc., which is a website platform for nonprofits and associations.
Morweb’s group management tool is lightweight, yet functional: their cloud-based software allows online communities to keep track of members, manage events, allow or restrict access to pages based on membership level, and fundraising, all through the community website.
Top Group Management Features
In addition to providing beautiful, functional, and mobile-responsive websites to online communities, Morweb offers the following group management features:
Your online community can handle its group membership needs, all from your own website.
Takeaway
Online communities looking for a lightweight group management system with real-world fundraising and event functionalities will be thrilled to use Morweb.
8. Church Community Builder – Top Group Management Tool for Faith-Based Organizations
Group Management Tool Overview
Church Community Builder is a fully functional group management and event planning tool for faith-based organizations. With their cloud-based, Software as a Service group management tool, your church can make sure that all of your members are engaged and included.
Their software, which is accessible from anywhere with internet access as well as through their app, allows church ministries to build profiles for anyone from first-time visitors to long-term members and volunteers.
Top Group Management Features
In addition to Church Community Builder’s ability to track church metrics, build intuitive web forms, provide online giving options, and streamline process queues, they also offer the following group management features:
With Church Community Builder’s group management tools, your church can make sure that everyone feels at home and welcome, even from their very first visit.
Takeaway
Help your church family work better together, increase engagement with everyone from dedicated volunteers to new visitors, and encourage church growth by investing in Church Community Builder for your ministry.
9. Alumni Channel – Top Group Management Tool for Alumni Groups
Group Management Tool Overview
Alumni Channel is a dual-use database and website creation software that allows your organization to keep track of your alumni while also providing a beautiful and functional place online to communicate, network, and learn.
This software allows your alumni and your team to access the website from anywhere with an Internet connection, even from smartphones and tablets. You can invite alumni to events, post news updates, send out email blasts, and ask for donations all from the same place.
Top Group Management Features
Alumni Channel makes it easy to manage your alumni community and improve your university fundraising strategy by providing you with the tools to keep them engaged visit after visit to your website. Some of those engaging features are:
With Alumni Channel’s appealing interface for alumni and useful administrator features, you’ll increase engagement after graduation as well as giving alumni the tools they need to build an online community where they can network and grow.
Takeaway
If you’re looking to provide a functional and attractive website for your alumni to interact with others on while also creating an alumni database that your organization can use, check out Alumni Channel to see what else their software can do.
Top 10 Donation Buttons to Raise More Funds Online
/0 Comments/in Learning Center /by Adam WeingerAs more and more nonprofits are focusing their fundraising efforts towards online campaigns, the versatility and functionality of donation buttons has grown.
The features required of these buttons have shifted as online fundraising has increased in popularity, but how can you know which product is right for your nonprofit’s needs?
We’ve chosen 10 of our favorite online donation buttons and explained the best features, so you can choose which donation button is right for you.
Use the navigation tool below to make finding what you need even easier.
If you’re ready to learn more, let’s get started!
1. Fundly – Best Crowdfunding Donation Button
Donation Button Overview:
Fundly’s easy-to-use crowdfunding platform is a great way for both individuals and nonprofits to raise money for a good cause. This donation tool is shareable on many social media platforms, is mobile-optimized, and allows you to keep supporters updated easily.
Standout Features:
We love that with Fundly, you can add personalized messages, photos, and videos to your crowdfunding page. You can even update your friends with a blog-like style of posting, which you can do from anywhere with the free Fundly app!
Fundly’s support system is also stellar: they help you set up your campaign, and are available all the way through till the end.
Takeaway:
If you’re looking for a socially-driven donation button tool to help you reach your goals, Fundly is the platform for you.
2. Double the Donation – Best Matching Gifts Donation Button Add-On
Donation Button Overview:
Double the Donation offers a powerful corporate philanthropy database for your nonprofit, so that your donors can be made aware of their employer’s matching gifts policy.
Double the Donation offers two options: one is a widget included directly on your website or donation page, and the other is a webpage hosted by Double the Donation, branded to your website, that offers the same information.
Double the Donation’s easily accessible matching gifts database makes every donation button twice as effective.
Standout Features:
Because Double the Donation’s database can be included right where your donation button is, donors are encouraged to follow up with their employer about matching gifts and maximize the impact of their donation for your nonprofit.
The database is frequently and rigorously updated, so you never have to worry about having out-of-date or incorrect information.
Takeaway:
Double the Donation takes your matching gifts strategy to the next level by making the necessary information easily accessible for all.
3. DonorBox – Best Recurring Donor Donation Button
Donation Button Overview:
DonorBox is an online donation button provider that allows you to embed their donation widget directly onto your page or create a dedicated donation page with your nonprofit’s branding.
With their donation pages, you can pre-fill custom amounts with descriptions so donors know what their donation does, offer multiple language options, and include employer donation matching information.
Standout Features:
With DonorBox, your recurring donors maintain full control over their relationship with your nonprofit. DonorBox also offers donors the option to cover processing fees, and their donation buttons are optimized for all sizes of browsers.
Takeaway:
DonorBox is a great donation button provider for nonprofits who are looking to prioritize their recurring gift donor retention strategy, as well as those who need the option to have their donation buttons in multiple languages.
4. Snowball – Best Text-To-Give Donation Button
Donation Button Overview:
Snowball offers an innovative two-tap solution to nonprofits so that donors are less likely to abandon the donation process partway through. From their phones, mobile users can select the amount of money that they want to give and then confirm their donation through an email.
Their text-to-give and peer-to-peer solutions are also just as easy to use and secure for donors.
Standout Features:
In addition to their fabulously simple method of completing their donations, the donation buttons that Snowball offers are fully customizable to your nonprofit’s branding.
Snowball also keeps track of all of your donation data, so that you can manage your donor and donation information while assessing your progress towards your fundraising goals.
Takeaway:
Snowball’s inventive and simple donation button is a great feature for anyone who is ready for a more intensive mobile donation campaign.
5. Bonfire – Best Merchandise Fundraising Donation Button
Donation Button Overview:
Bonfire combines merchandise selling with fundraising through their unique online donation button. With Bonfire, you create your t-shirt design, choose your profit margin and customize your donation page, and then start your campaign!
Because Bonfire puts the donation button on the same page as the purchase button, supporters of your campaign can help your cause both through buying your t-shirt and donating directly to your cause.
Standout Features:
The best part about Bonfire is that there is no inventory necessary. Bonfire prints and ships your shirts after they’ve been ordered, so there’s no chance of your campaign running out of t-shirts.
Bonfire also offers empathetic and helpful support through their “Happiness Team”, who are happy to help make sure your fundraiser is successful.
Takeaway:
Bonfire’s combination of effective donation button and fun merchandise options are a great fundraising option for nonprofits looking to raise funds while rewarding their supporters.
6. Qgiv – Best All-In-One Online Donation Button
Donation Button Overview:
Qgiv provides nonprofits with the software they need to run all kinds of fundraising campaigns, from online donation buttons to peer-to-peer fundraising pages to handheld kiosks for fundraising events.
Their team provides support for your nonprofit as you build your donation forms and start your campaign, and the software easily integrates into your other programs so that you can make sure that you have a 360-degree understanding of your donors.
Standout Features:
Qgiv offers amazing features such as fundraising thermometers and other gamification techniques, as well as options for donation buttons such as GiftAssist.
GiftAssist gives donors the option to cover the processing costs on their donation, so that more money goes straight to their favorite nonprofit.
Takeaway:
Qgiv’s huge suite of features and easy-to-use interface for both nonprofit professionals and donors makes this a powerful donation button provider.
7. Donately – Best Custom Donation Form Builder
Donation Button Overview:
Donately provides beautiful online donation tools that are fully responsive with any mobile device, so that you can reach your followers wherever, whenever.
They provide donation buttons to both individuals and nonprofits, so whatever you need to raise money for, they’ve got you covered. You can easily share your donation page on social media or through email, too.
Standout Features:
In addition to their custom donation buttons, Donately offers beautiful fundraising pages and donor management solutions. By using their forms, you can track the important information from all of your donations, as well as the ability to input cash or offline donations into your data set.
Takeaway:
Donately’s pages are super customizable, so you can easily make your donation button match your individual needs.
8. Edco – Best Donation Button for Education
Donation Button Overview:
Edco is a donation button provider that caters specifically to teachers and other education leaders. The team leader builds the page and starts the fundraiser, and then the team members (parents, students) promote the page and share it amongst their social circles.
People donate, and then you can receive your funds through check, ACH transfer, or reloadable prepaid debit card!
Standout Features:
We love how easy it is to share this donation button with your social network. You can share your campaign on social media and through direct email, all through Edco. They even provide you with templates!
Takeaway:
Edco is the perfect donation button for teachers, coaches, or parents to raise money to ensure their child’s success, no matter if you’re fundraising for a school trip, a sports team, or something else.
9. DonationForce – Best Donation Button for Small Nonprofits
Donation Button Overview:
DonationForce is a powerful donation button provider for nonprofits just starting up. It’s impossibly easy to set up, so that you can be accepting donations online in just minutes.
Once you’ve set up your account, you have access to key data and metrics from all your donations and you can seamlessly integrate DonationForce’s software with ticket pages for your events, matching gifts databases, and your email marketing platform.
Standout Features:
DonationForce is a powerful donation button because it offers a lot of features for a low price. With the DonationForce suite, you get a fast and secure donation process, automated receipts, and a fully mobile-responsive donation button.
Takeaway:
DonationForce offers a great donation button for nonprofits who are ready to start accepting online donations, but don’t need to invest in a personalized software yet.
10. iDonate – Best Donation Button for Large Nonprofits
Donation Button Overview:
iDonate makes donating super easy by embedding their online fundraising solution right onto your nonprofit’s website, blog, or Facebook page. Their donation buttons are easily customized to fit your brand, and everything is mobile-responsive.
Their multifaceted online giving platform offers everything from text-to-give to peer-to-peer fundraising, and all of their services can stream donor data into either the iDonate Backoffice CRM or into your nonprofit’s existing CRM.
Standout Features:
Our favorite part of iDonate is how easy it makes online and mobile giving for large nonprofits. They offer chapter management solutions so that each branch of your organization is able to fundraise to the best of their ability.
No matter where it needs to be or what it needs to do, a donation button from iDonate can help your large nonprofit optimize its online donation strategy.
Takeaway:
iDonate’s combination of hyperfunctional online giving tools and supportive staff are a boon to any nonprofit ready to try a new donation button.
Congrats! You’re now prepared to choose the right donation button for your nonprofit. If you’re interested in learning more about some other fundraising best practices, don’t hesitate to check out these additional resources: